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As he often does in public, the Brazilian star was wearing a ball cap to shield his face. Once removed, the robbers recognized him. They dropped their gun, flashed an embarrassed thumbs-up and ran off (presumably to rob someone less able to afford it).

Pele being Pele, he made sure the story got out. It worked for him on several levels.

It allowed him to play the populist. He would later he say he was “saddened” by the attack, and blame the lamentable state of Brazil’s youth on government apathy.

It also allowed him to appear seigneurial. A month earlier, one of Pele’s great foils, the former national team captain Romario, had been robbed in similar circumstances. Romario was also recognized. They still took his car.

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When they speak of Pele’s place in the Brazilian imagination, this story is more often referenced than anything he did on the field.

Whatever hold he once had over the little people, it’s loosening in the midst of countrywide protests.

Given a chance to side with the people, Pele has instead chosen to hide in that refuge Dr. Johnson assigned to scoundrels.

“Let’s forget all of this mayhem that’s happening in Brazil, all of these protests, and let’s remember that the national team is our country, our blood,” Pele said this week. For a man who goes on and on about Catholicism, that sounds close to idolatry.

One protester retorted thusly: “Wake up, Brazil. A teacher is worth more than (Pele favourite) Neymar.”

The people are angry about many things, from the quite specific (a 10-cent increase in bus fares) to the impossibly general (corruption).

But the bulk of frustration has found its way onto the 2014 World Cup. A few years ago, the cost of hosting was seen as an entry fee to the First World. When they won the bid in 2007, then football supremo Ricardo Teixeira cited it as proof that Brazil was a “civilized nation.”

If that’s what civilization costs, barbarism sounds better for business. Fourteen billion dollars later, Brazil has a few new arenas — most completely superfluous once the tournament ends — and little else.

Saying rather more than he intended, another former star, Ronaldo, offered this glib rationale: “A World Cup isn’t built with hospitals, my friend. It’s built with stadiums.”

The loosey-goosey practice run known as the Confederations Cup is now entering its final week. It can’t end soon enough.

FIFA was forced to announce a few days ago that it has not considered cancelling the current tournament because of clashes outside many of the stadiums (which is another way of announcing they did consider it).

In any case, this will have emboldened the protesters. The only purpose of the Confederations Cup is providing a signpost to the tournament that follows and soothing organizational fears. Rather the opposite has happened this time around. For the next year, the only story that matters is the panicky construction work of elites as they try to patch up enough holes in the kleptocracy to keep their constituents from humiliating them.

Brazil’s underclass is discovering that embarrassment is a more effective weapon of protest than violence.

The only great wonder in all this is that nobody’s figured this out before.

Originally, you got bread to go along with your circuses. The Romans understood that when you’re distracting the masses, the necessities must precede the frivolities.

Eventually, it became an either/or. Most people chose circuses over bread because most people, especially when operating in large groups, are idiots.

But it was at least something. Now we’ve graduated to nothing — a neither/nor. Neither decent bread nor proper circuses.

Whether it’s the World Cup or the Olympics, taxpayers are being bled to host a party to which they aren’t invited. They can’t afford the tickets and, if they can, they can’t buy them. Hosting an Olympics is like a high school prom, only they invited a different high school. Also, a little more expensive.

It’s an unsustainable exercise, and like all of those, it will eventually collapse under its own weight. The Games that gave rise to “bread and circuses” in the first place dominated the Roman Empire for centuries. Eventually, they grew so commonplace and lavish that they were abandoned altogether. Two hundred years after the last Games were held, no one in Rome could remember why the Colosseum had been built in the first place.

Before we get to that point, Brazil has introduced us to a new stage in the decline of the great sporting spectacle — as a lever for social change.

You buy the Olympics or the World Cup to attract attention. It’s a function of national narcissism. All narcissists can’t bear to be ill thought of.

In Brazil, we’re seeing how that failure in the ruling class can be turned into a virtue for the people who bankroll their lifestyles.

It’s an expensive lesson and one that shouldn’t have to be taught in the first place, but unlike a World Cup, it may result in something of lasting value.

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